Training Tips

Year: 2018

The early years of any child’s life tend to pass in a flash – especially for an adult who is witnessing their growth right by their side. The feeling that children grow up too fast can be somewhat melancholic, but knowing that they are gaining new skills and experiences and developing into their very own self is also something that brings their parents – or other caregivers – tremendous amounts of happiness.

One such milestone that can come as the first significant sign of their growth is reaching the schooling age (which is between three and five years of age, depending on the country and the lifestyle the parents lead). Since this will be the first formal experience young children will have outside of their family unit – away from their parents – the milestone can bring with it expected stress for both the child in question and his or her parents. Given the fact that there are many choices for preschools, from prep international kindergarten Bangkok to your local public kindergarten, the expectations you might have about preschool can also further increase this stress.

To ensure that your child’s first experience at school is a positive one (which is a very important thing, as their next decade or so of life will be spent within the confines of school establishments), there are a number of things you can do as a parent. However, the assumption here is that the parent should teach the child to read, to understand arithmetic and other complex skills. The truth is that these skills are to be taught in school: as a parent, what you should be teaching your child is far simpler, but also equally important.

To begin with, any early years school in Bangkok will expect their young students to be capable of looking after their immediate needs by themselves. This includes eating by themselves, going to the toilet by themselves, knowing how to wear clothes properly, climbing the stairs and other similar skills. To an adult, or even an older child, these might seem like mundane tasks that require little to no focus, but for a small child, they are important skills that need to be properly learned. Many parents fail to realize that they always help their child in these tasks, and as a result, once their child enters kindergarten, the child will expect their teachers to help them.

Of course, small children do need help, but the issue here is that if every child expects assistance for basic tasks, the teachers became unable to do their job and teach children – from taking the children to the washroom, to ensuring they flush the toilet properly or wash their hands, the list of things teachers are expected to do becomes almost impossible to fulfil. As such, instead of teaching your child to read, go through the motions of simple tasks and have them perform them by themselves at home.